Can a person recount the memoir of their entire life from beyond the grave? It is perhaps one of humanity’s oldest and most haunting fantasies. We routinely envision death as nothing more than pitch-black oblivion. And it is precisely by cleaving through the heart of that dark void that author Mahbub Mayukh Rishad seeks to paint the entire life of ‘Arimatano’ with the brush of words. Just as we often musingly wish—‘If only I could step inside another person’s mind and behold what their life truly felt like!’—the author has done exactly that in his novel “Arimatano.” Here, he ventures to discover himself within the lives of four or five disparate souls, seeking to voice their untold stories. And at the radiant epicenter of these intersecting fates stands the protagonist—Arimatano.
The novel opens with an utterly breathtaking passage:
“The weekend evening was slipping away. Meanwhile, I could hardly wait to tell you the story of Arimatano.”
Look closely, and one realizes that on an unburdened weekend evening, the author is gently beckoning the reader away from the crush of work and worldly distractions into the novel’s enchanted embrace. Any reader would effortlessly surrender to an invitation so intimate and alluring.
One of the book’s chapters is titled ‘Cyanide Flower.’ The title holds such an eerie, ethereal beauty that it defies easy articulation. The imagery within this chapter mirrors the seasons of despair in our own lives. When abrupt despondency descends upon us, when we sit to reconcile the balance sheet of departed days, a suffocating, coffin-like gloom grips our chest. While reading this chapter, the reader discovers a deep emotional resonance with their own seasons of sorrow. It is an indispensable chapter for understanding Arimatano and plunging into the novel’s core.
At one point in the book, it is written:
“Sleep is death. Once you fall asleep, death claims you.”
Reading this sentence sent a strange shiver through me. For, personally, my own thoughts have long been identical! Witnessing this uncanny kinship between the author’s musings and my own, the famous adage immediately sprang to mind: “Great minds think alike!”
Before the demands of college or university life set in, that long expanse of childhood and adolescence we inhabit is steeped in a kind of intoxicating nonchalance. Once grown, it feels as if those golden days vanished in the mere blink of an eye! In Arimatano, those abandoned adolescent days are rediscovered afresh. As one reads, the thought echoes—I, too, was once this carefree, or wished to remain so forever! Perhaps it is from this universal nostalgia of detachment that the author writes—
“My feet are bound by petrified roots; I can go nowhere, and the desire to leave is a distant star.”
Yet we can never preserve that innocence indefinitely. Inevitably, one is forced to embrace the unyielding reality of existence. Arimatano was compelled to walk the very same path. Yet he accepted that reality with unruffled ease; he discovered a true, devoted friend, and brushed against a hesitant, tender romance while preserving an enigmatic, untouchable distance.
The enigma surrounding Arimatano’s birth enshrouds the novel in suspense, compelling the reader to wait until the final page. In the interim, you traverse twenty-six or twenty-eight springs of a human existence. Throughout the novel, an ache of unfulfillment burns within the reader—and from this very longing, every mystery takes root. Yet Arimatano remains remarkably serene amidst it all. He yearns to know; but when repeated efforts yield nothing, what choice is there but detachment? Who are we? Where did our journey begin? Philosophical contemplations on this question are endless. Arimatano sought to answer this question as well. Did we find it? Did Arimatano discover it? Through Arimatano’s eyes, as a reader, I found myself striving once again to fathom this primordial riddle.
Alongside all this wonder, one minor flaw caught my attention: the gratuitous insertion of English loanwords. To my mind, this felt redundant, as nearly every English word employed possesses a sublime, sonorous Bengali equivalent. For example, where the author could have used the lyrical word ‘antohin’ (endless), he chose ‘eternal.’ Where, in the word ‘eternal,’ is that tender, intimate cadence unique to Bengali?
Some might perceive Arimatano as merely a conventional drama or fictional biography. Yet the novel is replete with startling plot turns and shifts of fortune. The author does not simply withhold the shock for the final page; even mid-narrative, sudden twists arrive with visceral impact. And the weight of the climactic twist in the concluding chapter is discreetly entrusted to the reader’s own contemplation.
In conclusion, there is an old proverb that seeing a solitary magpie brings sorrow. Likewise, if an author of such promise halts after crafting just one such exquisite novel, it would be a profound loss for readers like us. I sincerely hope that by penning many more thoughtful and wondrous novels, author Mahbub Mayukh Rishad will continue to enrich Bengali literature in the years to come.
